Aviation ingests a huge
Black Swan — March 2020

The term “Black Swan” was popularised by the philosopher/financial trader/statistician/polymath Nicholas Taleb* to describe an unpredicted event that has catastrophic consequences. From ancient times to the 1600s all swans were assumed to be white and the term “rare as a black swan” was used to describe an extremely improbable or impossible happening; then Europeans started to explore Australia and discovered that there were indeed black swans.

Taleb observed that Black Swan events are not only unpredictable and improbable but they are also inevitable. In fact, the 30-year chart shows four major Black Swan events impacting the aviation industry.